The American Bar at The Stafford

The American Bar sits inside The Stafford, on the St James's Place cul-de-sac, and belongs to the tradition of American bars that London and Paris took up in the 1920s and 1930s. The ceiling is the room's record: club ties and baseball caps left by guests over decades, hung in dense rows above a mahogany counter and a mirrored back bar of gilded shelving. Framed photographs cover the walls, with signed pennants, model aeroplanes and American football helmets crowded in among them. A plaque at the bar honours Nancy Wake, the wartime resistance agent who came in for a gin and tonic most days for over fifty years. The room was re-imagined in 2018 and lost none of it.

Seating is low: leather tub chairs and green banquettes under pleated lamps, with a run of stools along the counter. Doors open onto a cobbled mews courtyard of whitewashed brick, iron balconies, clipped olive trees and window boxes, kept usable through the year by retractable awnings and heaters, and served by a bar of its own.

The courtyard is the larger of the two private options, taken semi-privately for a drinks reception or exclusively for a party of around a hundred, with the hotel's kitchens behind it. Indoors, a semi-private area of the bar suits a gathering of up to sixteen. Exclusive use of the bar itself is arranged through the house rather than sold as a package.